Emissary

by Melissa McShane

  It got far more of a reaction than she’d expected. As it brushed the creature’s body, it shuddered, then convulsed. Streets moved so quickly that Zerafine thought the change might even have been visible in the waking world, and she heard human screams atop the wail of the winds. It had definitely felt that. It probably remembered the gods who had defeated it, stripped it of its power all those years ago. No wonder it was angry. She could feel its consciousness gathering, saw the apparitions swarm about its head. She tried another symbol, the lightning bolt of Kanu, god of storms, and it flicked its attention around and centered it on her. Its awareness felt like a weight, like the down comforters people used in the North that felt light when you drew them over you and then settled, bit by bit, until they were heavy and warm. This pressure, however, was neither warm nor comforting. It reminded her of being in Sukman’s presence, as if two giant fingers were trying to crush her head and make her eyeballs pop out, as if an anvil were being lowered onto her neck a fraction of an inch at a time, trying to snap her spine. It was terrifying. She was afraid—

  She dropped out of her trance state and cursed herself. She felt Gerrard’s hands supporting her; he said, “What’s wrong?” but she shook her head and re-centered herself. No fear.

  Through her heart’s eye she could see the old god gathering itself, growing nearer. She began drawing other symbols now, less potent ones, searching for the ones that would remind the old god who it had been. She only realized that this was a bad idea, that reminding this ghost that it had once been a master of the skies might make things worse, when the first of its memories reached her, and she saw—

  —fire and smoke and cries of pain—

  —dancing in a circle, the stars wheeling above—

  —thunderstorms in the mountains—

  —and she pulled free, watched the memories without being engulfed by them. There were so many, so many, back to the days when it had been the wind, flying free, to the days of the war with the new gods, and its terror at being bound, and that last memory gave her the key. She felt its sadness, and fear, and she wept for...him. Not it, but him. Compassion filled her to overflowing. She reached out and spoke to him.

  “Come home,” she whispered, or shouted—it was all the same here. “There is no more place for you here. Come home. Let Atenas bring you home.”

  She felt its anger turn to confusion and then fear. Its memories whirled out of control again; she drew symbols of peace and comfort as fast as her mind could shape them. “You’re afraid now,” she said. “But you don’t have to be.” She cautiously began drawing its memories together. It was so big. She firmly kept thoughts of failure locked away.

  It shuddered, breaking apart all her careful construction, and wailed a piteous cry that she knew only she could hear. It longed and it feared in equal measure. It was too afraid, and too powerful, for her to contain with her inadequate knowledge. The realization that no one else could do better was scant comfort. She reached out to him, and felt the spirit cling to her like a child clings to its mother.

  In that moment she knew with perfect clarity what she had to do. Her heart cried out against it. But there was only one other way for this creature to enter Atenas’s realm, and only one person who could open the way for him.

  Setting aside her anguish, she grasped the old god to her. “Come to me,” she said, and opened her heart’s eye as wide as it would go. She felt him stir and flow into her, through her, and the pressure increased until she could barely endure it. She felt her heart burst and her veins fill with ice, but she kept her grip on him, her lungs freezing up, her eyes frosting over, her heart’s eye wide open. It hurt more than Kalindi’s healing had, and she would have cried out if she’d had any air left in her lungs. Open, damn you, she screamed inside her failing brain, and at last the silver arch appeared before her, and gripping her burden with the last of her strength, she tumbled through it.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  She must have blacked out for a second, because she opened her eyes and saw no remnant of the daylight world, no silver arch. Instead, grayness surrounded her. If there were walls, they might have been ten feet away or a thousand. The surface beneath her feet was gray and smooth, with a little give to it. No light shone above; a gray radiance hung in the air around her. The pain was gone.

  At her feet sat a naked child, perhaps two years old. It was not an attractive child. The boy (as she saw when she squatted next to him) had patches of mousy brown hair growing randomly on his head. His eyes crossed so much he appeared to be permanently looking at the tip of his nose, and there were patches of red rash on his cheeks. She raised his head and saw, swimming within the depths of his black eyes, golden symbols shifting and merging. She tugged on his hand, encouraging him to stand. The boy rose up slightly and then sank down as if his legs wouldn’t support him.

  Zerafine looked around again. She realized that she was naked herself. That, at least, she had expected. What she had also expected, but did not see, was some indication of where to go. She stood up and rotated slowly in a complete circle: nothing. She took one step and lights blossomed around her foot, curving away as if outlining a path. More lights came on and stretched away in all directions. She stood at the hub of a dozen possible paths, all identical. Against the gray background, she saw words drift like phantoms: CHOOSE A PATH AND FIND ITS END.

  Instructions, yes, but how to choose? Twelve paths might mean the twelve gods, but no symbols showed which path belonged to which deity. And Zerafine would need a thirteenth choice, herself. On the other hand, those instructions....

  Zerafine stomped her left food into the spongy ground. “This end,” she said into the void.

  About fifty feet away, the second of the three arches into Atenas’s realm reared up in a place where moments ago there had been nothing. “Come on,” she told the boy, tugging his hand again. He didn’t move, didn’t give any sign that he understood her words. She bent over, hauled on his armpits, and lifted the child to sit astride her hip. His limbs were short and spindly. This wasn’t going to be comfortable for either of them, but she wasn’t about to leave him behind. He made no effort to support himself, though he did wrap his legs as far around her waist as he could. Her bare feet stuck unpleasantly to the ground as she trudged toward the arch. She circled it once, examining it: a flat ribbon of silvery, matte-finished metal that arched perhaps fifteen feet over her head, ten feet wide at the base. She hitched the boy higher up on her hip and stepped through.

  Her foot came down on a rough, black surface that felt like unfinished wood but had no visible grain. Momentum carried her two more steps, then she turned to look behind her; again, the arch was gone. She set the child down for a moment and drew a deep breath. On all sides, mists shifted like black draperies in a wind that Zerafine couldn’t feel. This would be the great judgment hall of Atenas, but where was everyone? It was supposed to be thronged with those who would testify for and against a soul, but failing that, it should certainly have held the Lord of Death’s throne, its back rising beyond vision into the heights of the sky, its feet extending deep beneath the surface of the earth. Or what passed for sky and earth, in this place; it was a thing scholars had debated for centuries.

  But it was empty.

  The boy looked up at her. A thin line of spittle ran from the corner of his mouth down his chin. Instinctively Zerafine wiped it away, then shook her fingers because she had nothing to wipe them on. “We can stay here or we can move on, sirrah, and I see no reason to do either,” she said. He reached out and took her hand, then pointed his face in a direction somewhat to their left. His eyes had come uncrossed and were nearly gold from the symbols thronging them.

  “Very well,” Zerafine said, and hoisted her burden again. She set off in the direction he indicated, his head lifted alertly even though he still, aside from maintaining a death grip on her hand, showed no awareness of her presence. She ducked through a wall of billowing mists and heard the laughter of children; another, and
voices spoke in a language she didn’t understand. The boy’s attention never wavered, and she wondered how much he was aware of anything else in his surroundings.

  She realized, after a moment, that someone paced beside her, a few yards off and always beyond a curtain of mist. “Don’t turn,” he said. His voice was a mellow tenor. “Don’t stop moving.”

  “Why not? Am I in danger?” she asked. Her voice shook.

  “You left danger behind at the first arch,” the stranger said. “But you have not yet reached your destination. Turn aside, and you will not find the path again for some time.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “Where all men and women go, in the end. To be judged.”

  “Why doesn’t he—” she bounced the boy in her arms a little—“look the way he did before?”

  “Could you have carried him if he did?”

  “I don’t understand why I have to carry him at all.”

  “You resent it, then.”

  “No! I chose this path. I just wish—”

  “Yes, Zerafine?”

  She stopped. She turned to face the stranger, ignoring the boy’s wordless keen. “My Lord Atenas,” she said, “I wish You would not speak in riddles now that we are in Your realm.”

  The Lord of Death smiled. He was tall and wide, his black skin darker than night, and when he stood still it was like looking into the abyss to meet his gaze. When he moved, light slid across the curves of his body and pooled in the hollow of his throat, in the creases of his eyelids. He wore his red robe open over bare flesh and his hood flung back across his shoulders, leaving his bald head uncovered. He took her free hand and, with a flicker, they had moved to stand beside his throne, or his throne had come to them. Dim figures moved in the mists behind the god’s throne. Atenas was now twenty, thirty feet tall, and his voice boomed from far above her head. “Sit down,” he said, and whether or not it was a command, Zerafine sat in the backless chair that appeared next to her. There was no seat for the boy, so she took him on her lap. He wiggled his bony bottom against her thighs and seemed to lose interest in his surroundings once again.

  “You have come to Me before your time, Zerafine,” said Atenas. He took his seat on His throne and laid both His enormous hands flat on His knees, and added, “And you come in company.”

  “He couldn’t find the way here,” Zerafine explained, “and this was the only way I knew to make sure he received justice.”

  “Your compassion is noted. However, your efforts are wasted. There is no place for him here.”

  Zerafine gaped. “No place? We are taught that everyone has a place in Your halls if only they can find the way to them.”

  “Every human,” Atenas corrected. “He is not human. He is god.”

  “Then all the more reason for You to accept him home! He’s one of You!”

  Atenas was silent.

  “My Lord,” Zerafine cried, “I have served You my whole life. I gave up my life and everything in it to bring this terrified spirit to you. I deserve an explanation.”

  Far above, one eye gleamed. “Deserve? Brave words.”

  “I am not brave. Merely unafraid.”

  Atenas leaned over until his vast face was less than a foot from hers. “Not afraid that I might take your afterlife away because of your insolence?”

  She stared him down. “My Lord is just as well as merciful. There would be no justice in that. And no mercy to deny me an understanding of why my life’s ending has been wasted.”

  Atenas sat back and then stood before her, once more only slightly larger than human size. He reached out as if to touch the boy’s head, then drew back. “My brothers and I came into being when the world was young,” he said. “It was a wild, glorious place. Mountains danced with the sea, and the wind carried both in his arms. Glorious. We were life itself. And then—other life arose. Human life. Beautiful, fragile life. It lived, and then it died, and had I not taken pity it would have been lost forever. So I made a place for it in My realm. But my brothers...were not so gentle.

  “It was not their fault,” Atenas added quickly, and there was a note of pain in his words. “They could not understand this new, delicate life. Other forces, however, did.” Atenas turned away and faced his throne. “Forces that arose because of humans, in response to humans. There was war. We lost. New gods arose and there was no room for the old ones anymore. The...Pantheon...could do nothing to me.” He chuckled, and Zerafine shuddered at the menace in it. “My brothers, though...” He turned back around and knelt on the floor before Zerafine—no, before the boy in her arms. “My poor brothers.”

  “Do you know what still gives Me pain, after all these centuries?” he said. “The new gods were right. Humanity could not survive in a world where seas raged out of their beds and mountains walked on their roots like giants. But I could not bear to see them destroyed by the new gods. So I swore an oath.” Atenas stood up. “I swore that, were they destroyed, I would not accept My brothers’ spirits into My realm. Their unquiet ghosts would tear the world into its four quarters and wreak havoc upon the rest. It was not a truce, but it was enough.”

  “So the gods took the old ones from their bodies and locked them away,” Zerafine said.

  “Buried deep and under their watchful godlike eyes,” Atenas agreed. “And My oath stands.”

  “But—the gods didn’t kill Your brother!” Zerafine said. “It was an accident. A stupid, human accident.”

  “I cannot break my word,” Atenas said. “It would mean war, again, and your people will not survive it.”

  “They’re going to be destroyed anyway, if You make his spirit go back,” Zerafine shouted, “because we have nothing that can contain a ghost the size of a city. The record says You turned Your back on the new gods and Your face toward humanity! You may be fulfilling the demands of justice in turning this ghost away, but it is neither just nor merciful to make humanity pay the price! Why is there no other way?”

  “Because the Lord Atenas is unwilling to pursue it,” said a voice like a thousand chiming bells. A woman emerged from the veils surrounding Atenas’s throne. Where he was black as ebon, she was flowing honey, her skin and hair and eyes a thousand shades of what in the living world could only be called gold. Her robe of emerald green and lapis blue fell open over a lushly rounded body. She laid her hand on the god’s shoulder. “Atenas, hear me, I beg you,” she said.

  “Kalindi. Speak.” His gaze rested on Zerafine.

  “It has been a thousand years or more since we were at war. Even gods can change.”

  “Change enough to give up a dream of conquest?”

  Kalindi laughed, a sound even more bell-like than her speaking voice. “Atenas, there is nothing left to conquer. Your brothers have slept peacefully these many years and their presence has blessed Our cities. We were wrong to force You to make that choice, and wrong not to see that We both wanted the same things. If I swear to You that We will not destroy your brothers, will You allow this one to return home? And the others, in their time?”

  Zerafine became conscious that she was holding her breath and that she held the boy’s hand crushed in hers. “Will that serve both justice and mercy, My servant?” Atenas asked her.

  “Surely that’s for You to judge, My Lord,” she whispered.

  “This is not a case in which I trust My judgment. My desires are in conflict with My oath. I must leave it to you.”

  Zerafine, stunned, could not breathe for a moment. “Why me?” she asked, her voice faint.

  “Because you can see more clearly than I, in this matter. Because you came before Me with no desire other than to see justice done. Because you felt compassion enough to let My brother destroy you, for his sake. I cannot see where justice is in all of this. So you must.”

  Zerafine looked into His fathomless eyes. She imagined what He must have seen, through the centuries, what He must have felt to see the last of His family lost to him. “Justice should not be mocked by mercy,” she said. “But n
either should mercy be denied for the sake of justice. Let Your new oath take the place of the old. Bring Your brother home.”

  Atenas turned to look at the golden goddess, then reached out to touch the boy’s head. “I swear it,” He said.

  A blast of arctic air threw Zerafine backward off her stool. A wild wind threaded with silver and blue blew around the throne, tore the mists to shreds and flashed star-like between the two gods. Atenas raised his hand to caress the wind and left it raised in salute as the old god spun away laughing and out of sight through the silver arch that had appeared beside the throne.

  Zerafine struggled to her feet and was assisted by a large, black hand. It felt like ordinary skin, if a trifle cooler than human normal. “My thanks,” Atenas said.

  “I am Your servant,” Zerafine said.

  “You are the only servant of whom I have asked so much,” said the god. “You have earned your place in My realm. But I think I owe you more than that. Ask, and I will do it for you.”

  Zerafine’s heart pounded. “There is only one thing I want, Lord.”

  “Name it.”

  “I want—” funny how her spirit could get as dry-mouthed as her body—“I want to live out my time in the human world. I want to finish everything I left undone.”

  Atenas gave her a sad, compassionate look. “That is beyond My power, My servant. Your body was damaged badly in your spirit’s journey here, and a further two days have passed since you left it. I could return you to your body, but you would not thank Me for it.”

  Zerafine struggled not to cry. “I understand,” she whispered. Goodbye, Gerrard.

  Kalindi cleared her throat. Even that sounded like bells, tiny flittering ones. “You are not the only one whose power extends into the human world, Atenas,” she said.